A War for Oil?

January 5, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Our family spent winter vacation in Colorado, and one day I
saw the most unusual site: two women marching around the
Aspen Mountain ski lift, waving signs protesting against
war in Iraq. One sign said: "Just War or Just Oil?" As I
watched this two-woman demonstration, I couldn't help
notice the auto traffic whizzing by them: one gas-guzzling
S.U.V. or Jeep after another, with even a Humvee or two
tossed in for good measure. The whole scene made me wonder
whether those two women weren't - indeed - asking the right
question: Is the war that the Bush team is preparing to
launch in Iraq really a war for oil?

My short answer is yes. Any war we launch in Iraq will
certainly be - in part - about oil. To deny that is
laughable. But whether it is seen to be only about oil will
depend on how we behave before an invasion and what we try
to build once we're there.

I say this possible Iraq war is partly about oil because it
is impossible to explain the Bush team's behavior
otherwise. Why are they going after Saddam Hussein with the
82nd Airborne and North Korea with diplomatic kid gloves -
when North Korea already has nuclear weapons, the missiles
to deliver them, a record of selling dangerous weapons to
anyone with cash, 100,000 U.S. troops in its missile range
and a leader who is even more cruel to his own people than
Saddam?

One reason, of course, is that it is easier to go after
Saddam. But the other reason is oil - even if the president
doesn't want to admit it. (Mr. Bush's recent attempt to
hype the Iraqi threat by saying that an Iraqi attack on
America - which is most unlikely - "would cripple our
economy" was embarrassing. It made the president look as if
he was groping for an excuse to go to war, absent a smoking
gun.)

Let's cut the nonsense. The primary reason the Bush team is
more focused on Saddam is because if he were to acquire
weapons of mass destruction, it might give him the leverage
he has long sought - not to attack us, but to extend his
influence over the world's largest source of oil, the
Persian Gulf.

But wait a minute. There is nothing illegitimate or immoral
about the U.S. being concerned that an evil, megalomaniacal
dictator might acquire excessive influence over the natural
resource that powers the world's industrial base.

"Would those women protesting in Aspen prefer that Saddam
Hussein control the oil instead - is that morally better?"
asks Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy
expert and author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World."
"Up to now, Saddam has used his oil wealth not to benefit
his people, but to wage war against all his neighbors,
build lavish palaces and acquire weapons of mass
destruction."

This is a good point, but the Bush team would have a
stronger case for fighting a war partly for oil if it made
clear by its behavior that it was acting for the benefit of
the planet, not simply to fuel American excesses.

I have no problem with a war for oil - if we accompany it
with a real program for energy conservation. But when we
tell the world that we couldn't care less about climate
change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we
feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much
oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in
the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to
economic survival - but our right to indulge. Now that will
be seen as immoral.

And should we end up occupying Iraq, and the first thing we
do is hand out drilling concessions to U.S. oil companies
alone, that perception would only be intensified.

And that leads to my second point. If we occupy Iraq and
simply install a more pro-U.S. autocrat to run the Iraqi
gas station (as we have in other Arab oil states), then
this war partly for oil would also be immoral.

If, on the other hand, the Bush team, and the American
people, prove willing to stay in Iraq and pay the full
price, in money and manpower, needed to help Iraqis build a
more progressive, democratizing Arab state - one that would
use its oil income for the benefit of all its people and
serve as a model for its neighbors - then a war partly over
oil would be quite legitimate. It would be a critical step
toward building a better Middle East.

So, I have no problem with a war for oil - provided that it
is to fuel the first progressive Arab regime, and not just
our S.U.V.'s, and provided we behave in a way that makes
clear to the world we are protecting everyone's access to
oil at reasonable prices - not simply our right to binge on
it. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/opinion/05FRIE.html?ex=1043141908&ei=1&en=be4e08bdde19e149